Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant. Bryant William Cullen

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      Dost thou idly ask to hear

      At what gentle seasons

      Nymphs relent, when lovers near

      Press the tenderest reasons?

      Ah, they give their faith too oft

      To the careless wooer;

      Maidens' hearts are always soft:

      Would that men's were truer!

      Woo the fair one when around

      Early birds are singing;

      When, o'er all the fragrant ground,

      Early herbs are springing:

      When the brookside, bank, and grove,

      All with blossoms laden,

      Shine with beauty, breathe of love, —

      Woo the timid maiden.

      Woo her when, with rosy blush,

      Summer eve is sinking;

      When, on rills that softly gush,

      Stars are softly winking;

      When through boughs that knit the bower

      Moonlight gleams are stealing;

      Woo her, till the gentle hour

      Wake a gentler feeling.

      Woo her when autumnal dyes

      Tinge the woody mountain;

      When the dropping foliage lies

      In the weedy fountain;

      Let the scene, that tells how fast

      Youth is passing over,

      Warn her, ere her bloom is past,

      To secure her lover.

      Woo her when the north winds call

      At the lattice nightly;

      When, within the cheerful hall,

      Blaze the fagots brightly;

      While the wintry tempest round

      Sweeps the landscape hoary,

      Sweeter in her ear shall sound

      Love's delightful story.

      Hear, Father, hear thy faint afflicted flock

      Cry to thee, from the desert and the rock;

      While those, who seek to slay thy children, hold

      Blasphemous worship under roofs of gold;

      And the broad goodly lands, with pleasant airs

      That nurse the grape and wave the grain, are theirs.

      Yet better were this mountain wilderness,

      And this wild life of danger and distress —

      Watchings by night and perilous flight by day,

      And meetings in the depths of earth to pray —

      Better, far better, than to kneel with them,

      And pay the impious rite thy laws condemn.

      Thou, Lord, dost hold the thunder; the firm land

      Tosses in billows when it feels thy hand;

      Thou dashest nation against nation, then

      Stillest the angry world to peace again.

      Oh, touch their stony hearts who hunt thy sons —

      The murderers of our wives and little ones.

      Yet, mighty God, yet shall thy frown look forth

      Unveiled, and terribly shall shake the earth.

      Then the foul power of priestly sin and all

      Its long-upheld idolatries shall fall.

      Thou shalt raise up the trampled and oppressed,

      And thy delivered saints shall dwell in rest.

      Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild

      Mingled in harmony on Nature's face,

      Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot

      Fail not with weariness, for on their tops

      The beauty and the majesty of earth,

      Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to forget

      The steep and toilsome way. There, as thou stand'st,

      The haunts of men below thee, and around

      The mountain-summits, thy expanding heart

      Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world

      To which thou art translated, and partake

      The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt look

      Upon the green and rolling forest-tops,

      And down into the secrets of the glens,

      And streams that with their bordering thickets strive

      To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, at once,

      Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds,

      And swarming roads, and there on solitudes

      That only hear the torrent, and the wind,

      And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice

      That seems a fragment of some mighty wall,

      Built by the hand that fashioned the old world,

      To separate its nations, and thrown down

      When the flood drowned them. To the north, a path

      Conducts you up the narrow battlement.

      Steep is the western side, shaggy and wild

      With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint,

      And many a hanging crag. But, to the east,

      Sheer to the vale go down the bare old cliffs —

      Huge pillars, that in middle heaven upbear

      Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark

      With moss, the growth of centuries, and there

      Of chalky whiteness where the thunderbolt

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